In the Osaka Appeal Court on June 24, the hearing was resumed of the appeal by the Public Procurator against the judgement of the Kobe C. urf dismissing the charges of embezzlement and fraud brought against Pau Kong, late com-Shattered Book of India, Australia and adore of the Kobe branch of the
China.
The Court asked the accused whether or not he had made " contract exch time he discounted bills for the firm of Sie Tong since May, 1905? The accused replied that he had made one every tim
to be submitted tothe Hanser, and ligned by the }—They had onl hora nh a Sofa
do not know whether all wore signed by him or not, as the Manager might or might not do so. signature is absolutely necessary.
To you way about it i—-Contracts ited to the Manager to enable the The in the book were made by the Manager himself, of, if ho waa absent, by a clerk.
The Court—Are the transnotis ea May, 1905, entered in the books?—Tho business was divided into completing the curator Gotan addressed the the prosecution, In the course observations he pointed out cused had mailecontradiciory atatemo the charge of ombezzlement, the point to be considered was whether or not the acoused had been prohibited by the Manager of the Bank from entering with the firm of 1905.
Teoorde it ap. peared that the scoured stated at the examination by the Procurstor that he was prohibited fr ing into transactions, acd thet during ti tion by the Preliminary Judge he discounted the bille when the publio trial took pi circumstances into oonrideration, conclusion must be reached that he in fact prohibited from doing business with Sie Tong. The stoond point in diapate was the extent of the powers of Bank compradores, In regard to thia point, the statements of som+o the witnesses differed greatly at the various examinations. According to the evidence of Lion Hoit zo and Lan Cho-feng it roomed that " Compradure was not authorized to carry on @ transaction without the permis-ion of the Manager. In the course of their testimony it was their pro} Is as to transactions rejected ' ye, by the Managers, but this was because and their employers iad*full confidence they had held their tions for years,
anthem. It might be that this was also the case with the accused, as he had the position. But these facta did not prove anything as to the general authority of compradores, If fsnager had not the right to reject th of the compradore, what necessity was there for him to initial the contract? It might be contended that a compradore possessed absolute authority because he had to deposit a largo sum as security in order to cover any loss sustained by the Bank, but this argument could not be accepted. To sum up, counsel proceeded, the accused had violated the prohibition of his Manager, and, induced by his desire to assist Sie Tong, bad wrongfully paid out the money of the Bank. It was hardly necessary to argue on the charge of fraud, as it was evident that the acoused utilized the similarity of the Chinese pronunciations of.the names of two Chinese in order to deceive the Bank. The Procurator concluded by urging that the judge Kobe Court was entirely unreasonable, Mr. Ota, for the defence, said that the office of compradore was peculiar to European trade in the Orient, The suners, customs, language and chi actor of the Chinese being quite different from those of Europeans, and the latter being ignorant of Chinese conditions, it was necessary to create the position of compradore, the latter acting in all transactions with Chinese In fact it might be said that the authority of the Manager was smal in such transactions, the compradore being responsible in any case for loses incurred. It would be very unreasonable if the compradore was equally compelled to give compensation whether oF not be b permission to enter into transaction. It was true that the Bank sustained a heavy loss, but the roster part of this was recovered incurred when was also known
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.